Install Node

It is quite easy to install Node.js using the Windows installer provided at http://nodejs.org.

Once you have installed node, you can test is using the command line interface:

c:\Users\tgrall>node
> console.log(process.version);
v0.8.16

Node is installed. So far so good !

Install Couchnode

Couchnode, the Couchbase Client Library for Node.js, is a native module. The tool used to install native modules is node-gyp. So to install couchnode you need to install :

node-gyp

python

Visual Studio to have access to a C/C++ compiler

Install node-gyp

The node-gyp module is easy to install and you can install it using npm using the following command:

npm install -g node-gyp

The -g parameter indicates that this module will be installed globally and added to your %PATH%.

Install Python

GYP uses Python to generate the project, so you need to install it on your environment. I have installed Python 2.7.3 using the Windows installer.

Install Visual Studio

Finally you need a C/C++ compiler, the best way to get it is to install Visual Studio. As you probably know I am not a Windows expert and I do not know a lot about Microsoft development tools. I have downloaded Visual Studio Express the free development tools from here; it was sufficient.

Install Libcouchbase for Windows

Couchnode uses libcouchbase the C client library, so before running the npm install for Couchbase, you need to install libcouchbase itself.

You can download it from Couchbase site. The Windows versions are located in the left menu of the page. Download the zip file, that matches your environment. I have downloaded the "Windows, 64-bit MSVC 10".

Node-gyp will look for all the dependencies (DLL, library headers) into c:\couchbase directory, so you need to unzip the file in this folder. This location comes from the binding.gyp file of the couchnode project.

Install and Test Couchnode itself!

Let's check what we have done so far; we have installed:

Node

node-gyp

Python

Visual Studio

Libcouchbase

We are now ready to install and use couchnode itself. For this we can create a new node project.

mkdir my-app
cd my-app
npm install couchbase

The install command will:

Create a node_modules folder and put couchbase client library in it

When installing/building couchnode on Windows I had the following warning :